I was invited for a birthday celebration. Its venue was in San Gabriel.

It was almost a month now since my previous visit to this place called Apayao.

This one is a mountain Barangay in the municipality of San Gabriel of the province of La Union.

Please let us practice the LNT (Leave No Trace) outdoor ethics/principles when going to these nature places.

Manage our waste products properly (pack it in, pack it out), don't leave your trash. Let us not vandalize/write/etch on its rock surfaces as well as on trees. Be respectful of the community's culture and traditions.

If you find this story/blogpost interesting and/or had helped you in any way (in your researches, works, travels, blogs, adventures, homeworks at school, a personal project and more), I'd like to hear a word or two from wonderful people like you. It gives me inspirations or simply Like "pagnapagna" in facebook. Cheers!

-my pagnapagna-

(July 24, 2017 a Monday)

Early morning, our meeting place was at the Little Surfmaid Hotel in the Surfing area of Urbiztondo, San Juan, La Union.

We departed from the place using a jeep that they own and it was a passenger jeep used to convey people to the mountain barangay of Apayao from downtown San Gabriel and vice versa.

We passed-by the San Gabriel Municipal hall and went eastward, to sitio Kilat then up to the barangay of Amontoc. Then it went down to the other side of the mountain, down into Apayao proper.

We finally arrived at their place and the celebration started. Goat was butchered for the occasion. There were lot of singing and everybody were singers, that's including me.

They brought out a local brew of rice wine called "tapey". It was very tasteful as it was the first extract from the brew.

"Tapey" a local rice wine brew

The celebration went on until nighttime. We went to sleep at around 10 pm but they, the local residents, continued on.

(July 25, 2017 a Tuesday)

Early morning, we woke up and so did the celebration. It started with them singing Iloco folk and novelty songs.

After some coffee and a light breakfast, the five of us (the celebrant, his son, his kumpare and a local kid) went to visit the waterfalls. We passed-by the area where the celebrant first built his hut many years past, where his son was born but now the hut was gone. Further down the trail we passed by the house of his son's mother's parents (parents-in-law). We continued walking on a trail that led down to a stream and there it was... the cascades. We went upstream to the main cascade.

Only four of us dipped in its cold water as his kumpare stayed downstream. He had difficulty on those slippery stones and bedrock. Yes, it was because of drinking too much "tapey".

After a few minutes, we left but the celebrant led another trail.

"Ditoy tan" (We go here), he said while I followed behind along the irrigation canal.

I followed and then noticed that as we went farther, the river/bedrock went farther down. Soon we were at around three stories high from the river below.

Heeha! "Tila pagpagnaan ta" (We were walking anywhere), I told the celebrant as we made the elevated canal our pathway. Surprisingly, there was a concreted steps leading down to the hanging bridge below. I later found out from him that some people use that sort of an aqueduct as path to nearby barangays such as barangay Balballayang.

We reached the trail at the other side of the river where we came from earlier and back to the house of the celebrant's parents-in-law where we bathed again.
And eventually arriving back at the celebration area.
Afterwards, I went to visit the one they called "Lipit"(To be continued on the Next post)